John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

Anticipatory Grief is not real—it means thinking that you can know what feeling you will have in the future which is not here yet (Published 2-28-12)

Q:

During the course of 2008 and 2009 my husband and myself were tragically going through differing issues. I was experiencing Liver Failure and had to have surgery, he was loosing his job as a HS Teacher, thus we were loosing our home, cars and everything imaginable. He wanted to continue work rather then stay as he would never get a teaching job again there because of the economy and his age. So we moved to VA and 5 weeks later he disappears. I was able to track him down as I received an on slough of insurance papers in the mail 7 weeks after he left. He had ALL Leukemia with extensive involvement in the brain. What symptoms I took for depression and grief for so many other things was actually in part symptoms we never even thought of. I can not get him to come home as he returned to his parents in California (56 YO). They are foreign nationals and clannish like Italians and Irish. They believe I did some horrid thing, too long to mention thus am an enemy. They have cut me out, but there is so much they don't know about him or his illness. Needless to say, it has been 18 months and he has lived longer then the norm of 11 months. NO ONE makes it past 2 years with his illness so their is not any hope of recovery.

I feel so violated and cheated that I can not spend the last few months with my husband of 15 years. I don't even think I am going to be allowed to go to his funeral as they will not tell me anything let alone when he dies. My mom died in the middle of all this, I lost most everything we owned and I am in a place where I would not have been had he not wanted a job.

Days seem unbearable at times, and I am told I am going through Anticipatory Grief. But is there any help for me? What can I do? At times I feel like a horrid wife and daughter in law. Most of my family is gone. I have one son 28, that is a disabled vet. He has his own problems, I can not lean there.

Does your book cover this? I know of countless people I have run across where families of dementia, Alzhimer's, brain cancer and other brain disorders that are going through this all the time. My story though unusual I am finding is not unique. There are just not many of us like this. Now my husband doesn't remember most of our marriage and won't talk to me.

Help Please.

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Anon,

It’s amazing how often a loss is compounded into what seems like so many other losses, and how overwhelming it can all be.

As you’ve noticed, as unique as you are and your relationship with your husband is, your story is not totally unique.

What’s disturbing—but also not uncommon—is how you start dismissing yourself and your value when you say, “At times I feel like a horrid wife and daughter in law.”

Our first suggestion is to stop beating yourself up. There’s no indication in your note that you were either a horrid wife or a bad daughter-in-law.

Our second suggestion is to eliminate the phrase “anticipatory grief” from your vocabulary. To have grief in the future, you have to go out of the moment and imagine how you will feel, some time later, when and if something happens. Nobody can really do that, and worse, the whole time that you are imagining how you might feel, you’re not living your life in real time.

There may not be anything you can do to soothe the ruffled feathers with your in-laws—and, it may not be possible for your husband to recover enough of his mental well-being to contact you and talk with you.

Since those are both unfortunately probably true, you are best guided to do as much work on yourself about the losses that have already occurred. That includes the death of your mother as well as the loss of your relationship with your husband. The Grief Recovery Handbook [available in most libraries and bookstores] covers those losses and many of the other things you’re going through.